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disarmament

IN A HISTORIC STATEMENT last November, Pope Francis categorically condemned not only “the threat” of nuclear weapons but also “their very possession.” In December, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for its work on a new global treaty to prohibit nuclear arms. Already approved by the United Nations, it’s expected to enter into force this year. The Vatican was one of the first to ratify.

Here in the United States, however, it’s like we live in the Twilight Zone. President Donald Trump threatens to “totally destroy North Korea,” tweets about how his “nuclear button” is bigger than Kim Jong Un’s, and is moving ahead with plans to spend $1.7 trillion to rebuild the nuclear arsenal over the next three decades.

Trump’s bombastic rhetoric and impulsive tweets worry Democrats and Republicans alike, with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) saying in October, “We could be heading toward World War III with the kinds of comments that he’s making.” In a sign of growing concern, the GOP-controlled Senate held the first congressional hearing on the president’s authority to launch nuclear weapons in 41 years. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Americans are concerned that President Trump “is so unstable, is so volatile” that he might order a nuclear strike that is “wildly out of step” with our national security interests.

Yet there is a relatively simple step the United States could take that would 1) limit President Trump’s nuclear options, 2) reduce the risk of war, 3) respond to growing international calls to eliminate atomic arms, and 4) save a boatload of money.

My new friends adhered to the “seamless garment” philosophy, also called the consistent life ethic, one committed to the protection of all human life, whether from war, poverty, racism, capital punishment, euthanasia, or abortion. One of them gave me a button that read “Peace begins in the womb,” and I pinned it to the bottom of the black leather motorcycle jacket I used to wear in those days.

Setsuko Thurlow was 13 when “progress” came to Hiroshima in a white-hot flash. In the dark silence following the nuclear bomb blast, Thurlow recalls children crying, “Mama, help me. God, help me.”

Her sister lived for four days. Many of her 351 dying schoolmates “looked like skeletons with skin hanging from their bones.”

They perished in agony.

Today, Thurlow and other survivors travel the globe, sharing their stories with a new generation for which nuclear weapons are an afterthought — seemingly a hypothetical and abstract threat.

The end of the Cold War had a mixed effect on the nuclear equation. Through dogged diplomacy and effective institutions, disarmament continues, though at a slower pace in recent years. There are now 10,000 operational nuclear warheads in the world, down from a high of 64,000 in 1986.

But the specter of nuclear terrorism and regional conflicts between nuclear weapons states makes nuclear weapons even more dangerous in our international system. Deterrence theory, which governed strategic thinking during the Cold War, is a much less compelling framework today.

Thankfully, most states have forsworn these armaments. Nuclear weapons are not vital to any state’s legitimate security interest. No state or NGO has the capacity to respond to the unfathomable humanitarian crisis that would follow an accidental or intentional use of a nuclear weapon.

The forthcoming dedication of the national memorial monument honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., affords an opening for considering the complexity and meaning of his leadership. He was not the tamed and desiccated civil hero as often portrayed in the United States around the time of his birthday, celebrated as a national holiday. He was until the moment of his death raising issues that challenged the conventional wisdom on poverty and racism, but also concerning war and peace.

King was in St. Joseph's Infirmary, Atlanta, for exhaustion and a viral infection when it was reported that he would receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. As Gary M. Pomerantz writes inWhere Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, this was the apparent cost exacted by intelligence surveillance efforts and the pressures of learning that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had formally approved wiretaps by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His evolving strength as a leader is revealed in his remarks in Norway that December, which linked the nonviolent struggle of the U.S. civil rights movement to the entire planet's need for disarmament.